


Laundry Day

by Nitrobot



Series: VenomCat Stories [2]
Category: Venom (Comics)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Missing Scene, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:01:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25962511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nitrobot/pseuds/Nitrobot
Summary: A "deleted scene" from Black, White & Red All Over; Felicia goes through her day as she gets ready for the Alchemax ball.
Relationships: Eddie Brock/Felicia Hardy, Eddie Brock/Venom Symbiote
Series: VenomCat Stories [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1315946
Kudos: 12





	Laundry Day

**Author's Note:**

> Chronologically this would take place between chapter 21 and 22 of BWRAO. It isn't long enough to constitute its own chapter and I had a "rule" that each night/day in the main story would take place from the viewpoint of a single character. So, the only way I'd ever get to show this is as a standalone oneshot. I hope it helps give some more insight into Felicia's mindset and her feelings towards Eddie at that point in the overall story.

Usually when she'd had a rough night, Felicia would just spend the following morning sleeping until the afternoon- and still feel like shit when she eventually woke up. If it wasn’t for the damn kids on the floor below slamming their basketball against the wall after school, she’d have happily slept right on until the sun went down. 

But, like it or not, she did have a big evening to prepare for. Usually she’d relish the chance to relive a moment of high society… usually. She’d also usually never be seen with the likes of Eddie Brock, but that promise to herself had gone right out the window as of late- right out of  _ his _ window, to be specific, in her hurry to get home after last night’s little movie date. 

Maybe she should have stayed. Made herself comfy in the chair, or waited for him to jolt awake. Waited so she could give him that ‘maybe later’ kiss she’d been holding onto. 

...Maybe she should be getting herself out of bed now, lest she start thinking of dangerous things. The kind of things that had gotten her heart broken in the past. 

_ ‘Don’t think of that, Felicia. Don’t think, just do. Shower. Breakfast. Laundry. Normal things that normal people do. I’m not normal, thank God, but I can pretend to be until the evening.’ _

And so she pulled herself from her covers to the bathroom, past her open window while resisting the urge to yell at the aforementioned damn kids running around below. Still feeling grimy from last night’s downpour, she was grateful to cover herself in her best soap, with her favorite violet shampoo in a strawberry-scented lather around her hair, her low idle hum lost in the hiss of the water above. 

To think something like this simple convenience was a luxury to someone like Eddie, something worth bargaining his valuable time and potentially even his life for...

Well, maybe it was like that at first. But he clearly wasn’t helping her just to use her bathroom anymore. Symby had said Eddie was thankful to her… for something. Something that only Eddie himself could tell her. 

_ ‘If you’d stayed, he might have woken up and told you.’ _

She squeezed her hair at the roots with gritted teeth, pushing that thought back down where it came from, switching the water to something shockingly cold to punish herself. ‘ _ And what else would have happened, hm? You’d have slept with him, that’s what. You’d have let him fuck you, because you don’t know how else to say “thank you” and mean it. Because you’re so desperate to see proof that he’s just like everyone else… every other guy. Every other one you’ve ruined a friendship with.” _

That was all assuming Eddie was even interested in any of that. He was already spoken for, after all. He thought she was hot but his heart was covered in pitch-black goo, with room for nothing else. 

_ ‘His heart? God, listen to yourself, Felicia.’  _ She shook her head in disgust, shutting off the icy water and emerging from the shower while the steam was still warm. Her soaking hair was firmly wrung out, before getting tightly packed into a turban with another towel wrapped around her body. She rarely felt better than right after a hot shower… but the effect was ruined somewhat this time, and she had no-one to blame for it but herself. Her and her spectacularly bad taste in men who were usually too good for her. 

There were worse guys to fall for, at least. Much worse. If anything, she could count herself lucky that this time she wasn’t just letting her heart lead her on a petty revenge quest against Peter- Fuck,  _ again  _ with the heart thing. At this rate she’d be crying over shitty poetry and listening to love songs from ten years ago. This was what the infamous Black Cat had been reduced to? God. If Eddie was around she would have slapped him for making her feel like this. After she got dressed, of course, and she opened her closet to… find it almost completely empty. There were dresses, including the lovely little number she’d found just last month and would finally get to show off tonight, but nothing ‘normal’ she could get in and out of in seconds. 

“Shit...” She’d been so caught up in her ‘evening activities’ that she hadn’t even noticed her entire wardrobe now lying in her dirty laundry basket. Her suit especially needed washed, now smelling damp and musty hanging in her closet’s hidden space, but the leather demanded a specialist touch- oils, polish, a whole spa treatment. She could throw the fur collar and gloves in the machine with everything else, at least. From looking at the giant mound of shirts and pants and underwear, she could tell it would take at least two loads to get through it all. 

_ ‘Everyday clothes in first. Start fixing the suit while you wait for it to finish. Then wash the rest while the first load is in the dryer.’  _ So long as she just had  _ something  _ to wear other than a towel… was there really nothing left in her closet? She rattled the hangers past, bent down to search through the shoe rack, combed through the tiny space twice and then three times over before  _ finally  _ finding something creased into a tiny bundle, tucked away way at the back and buried behind a shelf. As she smoothed it out, she quickly realised why she’d hadn’t seen it in so long. 

It was an old grey T-shirt with a white spider splashed across the front, the legs stretched over the chest. You could buy them at any NYC tourist store nowadays, one of thousands of ‘official’ Spider-Man branded apparel (if only Pete knew how to trademark himself without giving away his identity, he would have been a millionaire from merchandising by now). She’d bought it when they were dating, just to see him groan at the shoddy stitching. And maybe to prove to him that the Spider was more than just a nuisance to the city, that they really did love him- even as she slowly learned that she couldn’t.

She would have gotten rid of it a few months ago, torn it apart or thrown it right in the garbage without looking back. But it  _ was  _ comfy. And, quite frankly, it made her tits look great. So she threw it on top of the pile for the first load, going back to the bathroom with the basket under her arm and the steam from her shower still lingering around the ceiling. She stuffed the machine with as much as would fit in, squashing half the basket’s contents down before figuring it was enough. 

With the machine churning away and her towel tucked tight around her once more, she pulled her precious suit out and set to work bringing it back up to standard. She wouldn’t be wearing it tonight so it technically could have waited, but she didn’t like the thought of leaving the leather to crack and flake away just because of laziness. She oiled it at least once a month, even if she didn’t have many outings in it, and combed out the fur so it lay sleek along her collar. That was one thing to separate her from the likes of New York’s gutter criminals- pride in her appearance as well as her work. After all, if you were going to be on the news every other night the least you could do is look good for the cameras. 

She hadn’t seen any reports of herself lately though, or of Venom. Which was good. The last thing they needed was heroes or other zeroes taking notice and ruining everything when they were both so close to figuring out the truth. If they were on the right track, then they’d find out something tonight, about the Hood or Osborn or maybe even both of them. Assuming Eddie managed to even get them into the party, they could have their big hero moment and put the whole thing to rest. And then, when they had a moment to themselves… maybe...

Her phone burst to life, saving her from that dangerous train of thought, and she picked it up with her other hand still holding her well-worn oiling rag. It wasn’t a number she recognised, but she had a good idea of who it was. Speak of the devil, blah blah blah.

“Hello?” She was almost tempted to disguise her voice just to mess with him, but changed her mind just as she answered.

“ _ So... this really  _ is  _ your number?”  _ It was a little surreal hearing his voice without seeing him- then again, it wasn’t much different to hearing Symby without seeing it speak.

“Yes, Eddie, I didn’t give you a fake one just to make you look stupid.”

_ “Usually I do that well enough by myself.” _

She rolled her eyes even as she smiled, just imagining that goofy half-smirk of his. “Do you have the tickets?”

_ “Not yet, no. We’re going to see Liz just now, I just wanted to check that the mysterious number with the cat emoji next to it was really what Symby said it was.” _

She was about to tell him that a doodle on a piece of paper wasn’t an ‘emoji’ (God, he was the same generation as her yet he acted like such a boomer), but then she got a much better idea.  _ Now _ was the time to mess with him.

“You really should put a passcode on your phone, you know,” she tutted as she walked back to the bathroom to check on the washing machine. “Otherwise, all sorts of weirdos can get into your shit.”

There was a pause as poor Eddie took the bait. 

“ _...You didn’t look at my pictures, did you?” _

“Oh, but how could I resist?” she lied. “Where else can I see candid Venom selfies for free?”

“ _ That-we-I… T-Those were purely for journalistic purposes!" _

Felicia covered up a snort of laughter- she’d just made the whole thing up, of course, but now she couldn’t stop thinking of Venom agonising over getting the perfect angle in the middle of the night. Somehow she didn’t think a guy without a shower or stove was very literate with modern technology. "I believe you."

_ "Really?" _

"Of course no- oh, God dammit.” Her joy was instantly drowned when she opened the lid of the machine, finding her usually vibrant wardrobe had turned monochrome and murky, like someone had cranked the saturation way down when she wasn’t looking. 

_ “What? Did Norman find you? Is Spider-Man hanging outside your window?”  _ Eddie sounded genuinely panicked on her behalf, like he was already on his way to rescue her from the unspecified threat.

“Worse…” Felicia plucked at a shirt, finding that the water dripping off left marks on her hand.

“I must have left a pen in one of my pockets. My whole laundry load is stained.” With her luck, it was likely the ‘borrowed’ fountain pen she thought she’d lost weeks ago. Just as well she hadn’t thrown her white fur accents in with this load.

“ _ Ah. That’s one thing I don’t miss.” _

“Laundry? Yeah, some of us sadly can’t store a whole wardrobe in an alien.” Felicia growled in anger at herself as she tried to rescue her ruined clothes. The colors hadn’t suffered too much, but the whites and greys were beyond salvaging. She found a pair of jeans with black dripping down from the pocket, and found the culprit within- the fountain pen, of course. The ink had spilled out and contaminated every drop of water. This day was off to a fucking fantastic start already.

_ “You still got something you can wear?”  _ Eddie asked somewhat awkwardly. _ “I mean… in general?” _

“Yeah, yeah, it’s not the end of the world. But I’m still pissed at myself.” Felicia tried to squeeze out the black-stained water without dripping it over any more clothes or getting it on her towel. In her contained fury she quickly reached the bottom of the machine, where the worst of the damage had gathered. 

_ “Shit… I didn’t distract you, did I?”  _ Eddie sounded guilty, as if he had somehow willed her mind to wander and her pen to go missing in the first place. Felicia sighed as she pulled out the last item, the troublesome grey Spider-Man shirt. Though it wasn’t grey anymore. The shiny white spider had been spared staining, though it was a little faded from age. All around it had turned a very dark grey, almost as black as the ink itself. Almost as black as a symbiote. It was actually an improvement, Felicia thought.

“No, Eddie,” she said with a faint smile. “It’s not your fault.” She wrung it out, banishing the last of the stained water to the shower drain. “Just let me know the details ASAP. I need time to get ready."

_ "Oh, of course, what with all the makeup, hair and grappling hooks to prepare." _

"Something like that.” She kept the spider shirt separate from the others, leaving the ink stain to dry by itself. “I’ll see you tonight, Eddie."

_ “It’s a date. I mean, today. Today’s date. Which is, uh, the 17th. Today.” _

He was so fucking awkward, and yet she still loved him. “And I’ll see you too, Symby. Look after  _ Eddie Bear  _ until then.” She hung up just as Eddie started to splutter, and fell to her bathroom floor laughing at the ridiculousness of it all. Her towel had finally fallen off, but she didn’t care much anymore. She was in love, after all. That didn’t happen very often.

Just before she picked herself back up to shove the least-damaged clothes in the dryer, she made sure to save Eddie’s number. His contact name was set as a simple bear emoji. 


End file.
